HACX News

Remember HACX, the commercial TC for Doom II by Banjo Software? Well, the company does not exist anymore but it still might be possible to purchase a copy of this game by emailing Rich Johnston aka Nostromo who used to be on the Banjo team. According to Thumper who announced this on a RGCD newsgroup, Nostromo said "it's entirely possible that if enough people still show an interest for it, there's a possibility that it might become available again for a time."

More information on HACX can be found at Nostromo's site, or you can download the HACX demo from our shareware section and see for yourself what all the fuss is about.

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i say we should damn well release it as freeware. i mean, this scheme might net the team, oh, 2 more sales. woo. that's to set off against the huge pile of cash that was paid to license the engine in the first place. so why not just make it free? that way everyone loves us and the community gets a pretty neat wad free. (for anyone who's doubtful, the full version is rather better than the demo. really. my second level kinda sucks tho, hehe :>). and anyway, i've lost my copy, so this way i'd get another. you know team members never even got sent a boxed copy?! fucking shite project, heh.

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Guest Xenocide

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Heh, dude I have better games to save up for, like Daikatana and stuff, nevermind spending even like $10 on Hacx. Seriously it better be cheaper than Doom/2 too because it's gotta be way shorter and of course they didn't make the engine. Take OpFor which was a Half-Life addon, they charged $40 for it (same price as HL) and it was about 1/2 the length. What a rip, $20 would have been more reasonable. Anyway, paying for a Doom addon is kinda dumb, hell most people don't even want to pay for Doom itself, nevermind an addon that no one has heard of, plus you could go download the Darkening or Requiem which is just as good, if not better, and it's free. I dunno tho, I'm just a stupid llama. Hehe, you can vote on it at DN tho, I put a new poll up. ph33r.

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so, how do you _know_ how good it is then? hehe :). seriously, the full version is rather better than the demo (well, the demo doesn't have any of my levels in, i mean how much proof do you _want_? :>>). it's not worth paying for, imo..but it's probably at least as good as strain. it's 21 levels, iirc, some are quite large, some are complete copouts (i could mutter something about two-day development cycles here, but...). if it was made available for free, it'd certainly be something people would enjoy...and hell, it'd at least be a _finished_ megawad :)

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Guest Nostromo

Jeez. I get two e-mails asking where Hacx can be picked up at and look at the activity it's inspired. I want to correct something that's been said in the intro to this discussion. I never made the quote: "it's entirely possible that if enough people still show an interest for it, there's a possibility that it might become available again for a time." I'm not sure who did or why is was attributed to me but I will tell you what is happening. Banjo software has disappeared. So, as far as I know, I'm the only one in possession of the original pre-CD release version of the game ...which, by the way, does not have the texture bugs that are apparent in the CD version. After repeated attempts to contact the powers-that-be at Banjo, I've brought up the subject to various members of the Banjo crew and we all agree ...let's put the thing up on the Internet for free. There's one problem associated with this. I'm not Banjo Software. It's true that I was the Project Leader for the Hacx2 3D project (which met with a sad end, I'm sorry to say) but I was not one of the head hochos. Although it's pretty apparent that Banjo no longer has an interest in Hacx, releasing it as freeware on my own could open me up to some ugly legal problem ...although I can't conceive of there being anything to gain by it. So, before I do that, I'm going to do whatever I can to contact the leaders of Banjo Software. If I simply can't find any of them after a period of time, I'll just release the sucker and cross my fingers. Stay tuned.

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Guest Anonymous User

I didn't like the sound of "well if enough people show interest in it, there's a possibility" one bit. I've heard this line many times before from other people, and often it means that I would never get my hands on a copy of the software. Why didn't banjo just release it, instead of this hassle?. And what about future players that might miss the current "hype" and discover HACX later, like it ,and never have a chance to play it because the authors could no longer be contacted- period?

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Just to clarify a point Nostromo made: the quote you are referring to is taken from a RGCD newsgroup post made by Thumper, who was summarising the situation. So, I was quoting him and not you :) It wasn't intended to make it look like -you- made that statement, sorry.

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Guest Nostromo

Nothing to apologize about, Mordeth. I just noticed that was the impression that everyone got and I could see where this thread was going so I wanted to set the record straight. No, I don't see any logical reason why anyone, including Banjo, would want to try and "sell" Hacx again. That would certainly be an exercise in futility.

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Guest Nostromo

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i expect the banjo head honchos are now living under assumed names in mexico anyway, so i don't think serious legal problems would result from releasing hacx, hehe :). but, to be serious (hey, someone told me you should try everything once), i do think a free release, which actually genuinely looks on the cards, would be beneficial to everyone...no-one pays for downloads any more, not even me, so what've you got to lose, huh? punk? :). i agree with everyone who says they wouldn't pay for a doom addon, it'd be completely nuts, there's enough decent free ones to keep anyone going a lifetime. but the full version of hacx definitely holds its own against most of the stuff you can get off cdrom. oh and to daggah...you're absolutely right about the demo, and i wouldn't have expected it to entice you to buy the full thing...i was just saying that, if the full thing becomes available free, don't be put off by the demo, there's lots of good stuff in the full monty :).

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Guest ThE NoraD

Fuck yeah, release hacx, i've got an addon i've been working on for two monnts that has really killer effects like 4 *new* monsters (borrowed from darkfangs doom thrust project) plus i've taken it opon myself to create the final boss that never was. What the hell is up with that? No final boss at the end of the game, that sucked!!! play through to see some killer effect at the end of the game, not some corney level. By the way, if any of the banjo (or people that worked on hacx 3d that has any rementents left over, i sure could use them) what does the rest of the community think of this? Drop me a line at Skadoomer@yahoo.com

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Guest Nostromo

We originally had 32 levels slated and a few more monsters lined up. But, we were trying to make a marketable game and we knew if we didn't get it out before Quake, it'd be a lost cause. So, we decided to just release it to get some attention and jump right into Hacx2 with the new 3D engines. Unfortunately, we never got enough interest from the industry and after 2 years of busting our ass, we all sort of gave up ...not to mention real life getting in the way. Concerning your add-on, you may have to do some converting in the textures. The version I'm going to release was the final version of the game. For some reason, and I don't quite remember why, the texture names were changed before pressing it to CD. This resulted in several texture bugs in the CD version. TO EVERYONE --- I'll probably release it sometime within the next week. I want to totally reconstruct my web site as the Official Hacx Site. (Why not? ...Banjo ain't going to do it) It'll have a few nice feature pages as well as the files. I don't think it was ever done right the first time around.